Whitlam and his public service demons

Professor Jane Hocking's latest biographical volume, Gough Whitlam: His Time, about the Labor prime minister from 1972 to 1975, is not much interested in the public service; its main interest is the events of Remembrance Day 1975 and the trail leading to it. The prime minister's notable Garran oration in 1973 goes unnoticed and unlisted in the bibliography.

There is the obligatory eulogy to H. C. Coombs but, while his taskforce on the continuing expenditure programs of the previous government gets a nod, there is no mention of the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, which he chaired, nor the report, with four research volumes, that it produced.

The flavour of the work's approach to the public service is disclosed without much delay.

Early in the book, the reader is informed: "For the new government with its own priorities and its own bureaucratic requirements, the difficulty lay with neither the establishment of new departments nor the closure of existing ones secretaries."

On the day after the December 2 election, Whitlam made "the first of several critical unilateral decisions ... in asking [Sir John] Bunting [Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet], Clarrie Harders [Attorney-General's] and [Sir Keith] Waller [Foreign Affairs] to remain in their positions". The troubled author laments that Whitlam "had discussed it neither with his party nor his staff, many of whom were privately appalled".

Shortly afterwards, the Treasury secretary, Sir Frederick Wheeler, was informed he was to be retained "a clean sweep for the old guard" (most people would also, at least, include Defence's Sir Arthur Tange in this category).

Though usually conspicuously keen to remind the reader of links between Whitlam and the Labor governments of the 1940s, Hocking makes no reference to Wheeler's closeness to former Labor prime minister Ben Chifley.

According to Chifley's biographer, L. F. Crisp well placed to know, as a former director-general of Postwar Reconstruction Wheeler "rose rapidly to a very special place in Chifley's confidence..."

There were few meetings of cabinet economic committees where Wheeler was not to be found at Chifley's elbow."

But, by 1972, he had become "the legendary tough survivor"!

"John Mant, Tom Uren's adviser and later to be Whitlam's private secretary was particularly keen that all four heads be replaced: 'it had been so long in the Menzies mould ... it was really important that you get the person running the department that you want running the department'."

Whitlam protested that he did not distrust public servants because his father had been one and a particularly impartial one".